But what if the collectivity of what are taken to be 'just institutions' generates terrible results for the people in that society (without actu¬ally violating their immediate concerns, such as the guarantee of lib¬ertarian rights, as in Nozick's case)?* Nozick did recognize that there could be a problem here. Indeed, he proceeded to make a possible exception to the case in which the system advocated by him, with complete priority of libertarian rights, would lead to what he called 'catastrophic moral horror'. The institutional requirements might well be dropped in those "extreme cases. But once such an exception is made, it is not clear what remains of the basic priorities in his theory of justice, and the fundamental place that is given to the necessary institutions and rules within that theory. If catastrophic moral horrors are adequate for abandoning the reliance on the allegedly right insti¬tutions altogether, could it be the case that bad social consequences that are not absolutely catastrophic but still quite nasty might be adequate grounds for second-guessing the priority of institutions in less drastic ways?